Some friendly tips and tricks I've found useful

[Shneekey]

This is a pretty nice survival game, however there's some less intuitive ideas that can significantly help you survive and thrive on the open ocean much more easily. Here's a few things I discovered on my own that have significantly helped me, maybe they'll help you too.

* Instead of building a whole row of nets, alternate between net square and foundation square. The odds that something is going to 'shoot the gap' between them is minimal, even if you are precisely perpendicular to the direction you are going. And if there is any sort of angle (which is virtually certain after the first time you get spun around), then the odds of anything slipping past approaches zero. Meanwhile, you halve the amount of resources needed to snag flotsam floating past.

* You only need to build nets on two perpendicular angles, an 'L' or 'T' shape shape if you like. How you set it up is entirely up to you, your sense of aesthetics, and how easily you can access the nets for collection.

* Start small, build tall. Because many islands require a second or third story access point to reach the top with the chest full of goodies, A 5x5 or 7x7 raft is going to be plenty of floor space, especially if you start building up. For your first island, you can build a ramp of 45* angle roof up to the top of the island, if you have enough room. Just remember that you're probably going to lose most of that construction. Still might be worth it if you get enough scrap, metal ingot, or other rare and valuable goodies from it. Plus you'll probably make your wood back in the trees you can gain access to and chop down. But with two or three levels, you'll have more than enough square footage to do whatever you want.

* Having said that, you really need a 5x5 raft before you start doing research, and make sure nothing critical is on the edge of the raft, as the shark tends to vastly prefer attacking the edge of the raft over a central block. But once you do have that 5x5 raft, drop the research table and start getting a lot of low-hanging fruit that will be enormously useful, such as the scrap hook and nets.

* Avoid the flowers at the beginning of the game. They'll just take up an insane amount of storage space, and the only purpose they have is for painting. So until you get a paint mill and brush, the flowers have zero use.

* Small crop plot is invaluable. Not for growing beets or potatoes, but for attracting seagulls that can then be killed and eaten. Cooked drumsticks are way better food than cooked beets or potatoes.

* Scrap Hooks are amazing. Make one as soon as you can, and never make another plastic hook again!

* The smelter is a huge gate for many 'quality of life' goodies, so being able to collect sand and clay as soon as you can is going to be huge. To this end, distract the shark with some bait while you dive and collect scrap, clay, and sand from the shallows around islands. This is, in some ways, even more important than the chest at the top of the island or the trees due to how many dried bricks are needed to make the smelter. You're going to want 14 clay and sand to do the research and craft the smelter.

[Ghostlight]

Originally posted by Lil Mandrake:

The thing i found in today's game:
1) You can reinforce the collector, and also you can walk over after reinforce it (i dunno if this is bug but i like it)

You can walk over collectors even if they are not re-enforced. They just count as normal raft tiles. This is why you should NOT have your collectors at the outer edge of your raft (where the shark can eat them). You can build another edge of plain raft tiles around your collectors to prevent the shark reaching them. Most of the time, it will still occasionally attack a tile that is not at the outer edge of the raft, which is probably a bug.

[Ghostlight]

Originally posted by reddevil:

Originally posted by Tickle Toast:

As for the third slot

Its for wearing the shark head.

Binnoculars too.

Stick to wooden spears.

The metal spear is wonderful--it doesn't wear out nearly as fast, and it wounds the shark a lot more. You'll wear out a wooden spear killing one shark and wear another a third of the way down, but you can easily get two sharks and wound another with one metal spear--and just as important when you've been at it for a long while and you're sick and tired of stabbing the things, it's a whole lot faster.

But it also eats up metal. It takes three ingots to make one metal spear, which means that if you have to kill a shark before you make your dive, your dive has to find metal--otherwise you'll be using your metal up faster than you replace it

No. Just no. One Shark Bait will give you enough dive time to collect at least a dozen Metal Ore per dive (assuming you have Fins and Tank, which you should, as they are easy as hell to make). I suspect you are not diving deep enough. Most dives will also yield a shipwreck if you dive deep enough, whose chest almost always contains a Bolt. It is very very EASY to stockpile Metal Ingots (and thus make Metal Spears only) once you have Fins and Tank. In fact once I had those it only took about 5 islands to get enough Metal Ore to completely re-enforce my entire 25 x 25 raft's outer edges.

[BadPractice]

Originally posted by kopiC:

• Smaller raft = easier to spot shark attacking raft. If the attack happens far away, you may not even hear anything, or reach it in time.

Using 1 spacing i made a row of 10 tiles of net (20 total) very early on. Did the shark bite out tiles without me noticing? Yes (rarely), but it was cheap to replace and it brought way more resources then the repairs costed. I cleared out like 97% of all floating goods! In fact i even stopped chopping down trees because sailing that way was faster to gather planks and leafs.

In my opinion you should build nets out until you cover almost everything. Cover them with 1 line of blanks on both sides and replace it when you missed the shark (still rarely occurs).

Although no point in building L, T or + shapes. Just 1 very long line and sail in the appropriate direction.


I also never build a farming pot (well except the boot but never harvested ). I just used the cheap fishing rod to farm shark bait and ate the other stuff. This may not proof valid in multiplayer though since you need more food but not more shark bait

[wings_of_niveous]

In the spirit of tips, I tend to play with brutal restrictions. (no hooking as an example)
It really highlights the important things early game.

I always make first my hammer, then a cup and purifier, then a spear (need my plastic), then the grill and fishing rod. If the game decides to dark souls me with luck, I build a paddle to gather the fishing rod materials. But you'll replace that rod and spear soon, so it's better to sustain yourself with two crop-plots and a second purifier and grill. By then you'll have a nice lil' 6x6 noob raft, even with restrictions.

I think most people use their hooks to....hook. But on the off chance people want more a challenge, self imposed rules can be a lot of fun.

PS: I don't know if this is true, but it seems to help me out. When reaching for item off the side of the raft, holding down crawl seems to extend my reach more.

[Mukri Schablala]

I people, sorry for the noob question but if i put iron or copper in my research book, i can't click on the research button even though i never researched them before...any ideas?

[Buffy]

Originally posted by Schnitzelman:

I people, sorry for the noob question but if i put iron or copper in my research book, i can't click on the research button even though i never researched them before...any ideas?

Are you putting in a single piece of ore or did you make an ingot and put that in? The research table requires you to put in a single ingot. You'll need to make an ingot of each with the Smelter.

[MANA]

Not sure if this will be patched but...you can wear 2 oxy tanks and flippers. Place oxytank in 1st slot, place flippers in 2nd slot then drag flippers from 2nd slot onto 2nd tank then put flippers in 3rd slot. With this method you can dive for an entire bait before needing air.

Also middle click on mouse will pick up half a stack and if you roll the mouse wheel while holding the half stack it will reduce or increase amount.

[WizeDraco]

fun little discovery the bow is just as powerful as the metal spear and using a bow and arrow is still more economical in the long run as it doesn't use metal i'm actually considering giving up the spear entirley as i'm late game (got there in a few hours actually) and the metal could be put to better use for reinforcement

[peepee]

Originally posted by MANA:

Not sure if this will be patched but...you can wear 2 oxy tanks and flippers. Place oxytank in 1st slot, place flippers in 2nd slot then drag flippers from 2nd slot onto 2nd tank then put flippers in 3rd slot. With this method you can dive for an entire bait before needing air.

Also middle click on mouse will pick up half a stack and if you roll the mouse wheel while holding the half stack it will reduce or increase amount.

- this works with 3 flippers or 3 tanks. You can swim faster than the shark with 3 flippers and spear him to death quite easily. I now have an overabundance of meat and pretty much throw away all the other food due to having no room.

- No flippers? use the bow and arrow to kill shark underwater. It is much easier than timing a spear thrust and if you are quick enough you can recover the arrows as the shark passes by. This also works from above the water, but is much slower and arrows are not as easily recovered.

- I use two sails, one up high for better placement into the trash stream and one down low near my permanent anchor for island oil rig maneuvering. Dropping anchor will override the effects of the sail. Also I only use one sail at a time since they do not stack and may interfere if the directions are pointing different.

- I tend to stick with metal tools mid late game, due to killing shark is easy and allows you ample time to gather ore. I suspect the flipper stacking may be eventually patched out, but falling back to bow and arrow makes shark killing fairly easy.

[Base Invaders]

It is a good idea to use sails and try to even if you don't afford it. I own a similar game called planet base and in there, I need to sometimes even trade for stuff too build vital structures . Correct me if i'm wrong because I haven't played this in a while.

[Zourin]

A few tips:

- Learn to joust-hunt the shark for meat. Once the shark is dead, you have a bunch of meat and five minutes of shark-free diving time.

- Use multiple sprinklers when you're working with livestock or they'll die faster than you can turn around.

- Use a small planter as bird bait in an open, easy location for you to shoot at.

- Never, ever underestimate how much food & water. stockpile as much of everything as you possibly can, in cooked form.

- It's OK to not be growing things all the time. Crops require constant babysitting, so don't always be growing crops or leaving it in the planter. Having a dozen planters is better than two when it comes to time investment. This goes for flowers and honey as well.

[poppetshadow]

I'm going to add a few things (but I'm not the one that resurrected this thread, so don't yell at me).

I find bird nests are better than crop plots for attracting seagulls (no need for seeds or water). I have found a bit of a bug with them, if you try to shoot a nesting bird with a bow, you have to be at just the right angle and distance, or the arrow just lodges into the nest (aim for the eye hunters!). Also, place the nest away from the edge so when you shoot the bird it doesn't bounce away into the water.

My favorite raft is 10x10 with a 9x9 upper floor. I like the size management for solo or a few players. Plenty of room for a few trees, bees, etc..., and one of each animal on the upper deck (one sprinkler and 3-5 crop plots each) along with my sail and receiver. The reason for the 9x9 upper deck is so I can jump off the upper deck anywhere and not accidentally fall in the water. I put an inside row of nets around the entire raft (they're cheap enough to make) and eventually armor the entire thing from the inside working out. I also make a row of armored plates around the engine (late game) although I don't think the shark actually attacks the engine part. If I was saving my metal ingots I wouldn't bother armoring the outside edge or the corners of the raft at all and just use it to lure the shark in for a kill. I also don't build a lot of walls, I prefer the view. I just have a double wall for 6 storage crates, and another for decor/balance on the lower deck. This would be different if I was a hoarder. lol.

Like most players, I find that fishing, seagull and shark hunting, and gathered veggies (from barrels and islands) provide more than enough food without any need for farming. I haven't needed the cooking perks yet, perhaps chapter 2 will make them more relevant?

One thing I discovered the hard way about farm animals, if you make the pen irregular (with angles like an L shape) with the grass plots only on one side, they can get stuck in a corner trying to travel directly to the grass and end up starving instead of walking around. I also fence off the sprinkler squares so they can't get caught on those either.

Also, I don't use the more expensive scrap hook for anything except diving (until late game), the plastic one is so much cheaper and works just fine for hooking items. I'm a patient hunter, so I don't use metal arrows at all, only stone.

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Why why need to wear the shark head?